


It's Too Bad He Won't Live! But Then Again, Who Does?

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Apocalypse, Blade Runner AU, Colonization, Confusion, Gen, Identity Issues, Mad Scientists, Rick Deckard Is Kylo's Father, Secret Identity, Voight-Kampff tests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10041083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: After the fall of Tyrell Corporation the number of replicants in use across the galaxy fell dramatically. Now the First Order are bringing them back, and Kylo Ren has found himself in his father's old job. Hux wants him to assess the new Nexus 7, but will he be able to spot the newest replicant?For the prompt - "Please stop petting the test subjects."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jathis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jathis/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Жаль, ему не дано пожить. А впрочем, кто живёт?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10138166) by [Protego_Maxima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Protego_Maxima/pseuds/Protego_Maxima)



There was something about First Order Enterprises that always made Kylo’s skin crawl the instant he entered the building. The feeling would intensify like a gathering storm as the elevator rose until he was damn near certain his hair was standing on end. He absolutely hated the place.

His father had said much the same about the Tyrell Corporation. 

Tyrell Corp was long gone but they had first created the hyper realistic androids known as ‘replicants’. Their ‘management’ had been his father’s own gory specialty until his disappearance. Now the First Order had the only production licence and he was following in his father’s footsteps. It hadn't been a trade he ever expected to go into himself. 

After Dr Tyrell died at the hands of his own creations, the company had floundered for decades without any new investment. Of course the number of replicants galaxy-wide had dropped off significantly. People didn't want to buy machines that might kill you, even if the company swore the issue was limited to just a few models. Over time people had forgotten the danger and they'd become nostalgic things, nothing but a symbol of a past age.

That was until the sudden appearance of Dr Hux two years ago. The enigmatic redhead had quietly resurrected the entire industry and with it the perennial problem of rogue replicants.

Brutal, unsophisticated things, they were originally designed and built to aid humanity’s transition to the Off-World Colonies. They’d diversified into soldiers, workers, pleasure models, but they were always intended for use only in space.

The danger came from the fact that replicants had always been banned on Earth - what was good for the Colonies was not acceptable for the precious, polluted, dying Home World.

Initially it had been a political thing, back when Earth had a large population of manual workers and soldiers who might object to their livelihoods being stolen by robots. The rule had lingered while the Earth depopulated and slowly it came to make some sense. Unlike the small insular Colonies- where anyone behaving out of the ordinary might be easily noticed- the Earth offered an entire, mostly-empty, planet to hide in.

Earth came to represent freedom from their slavery for those replicants who broke their programming, and the increasingly strange crowds of survivors that lingered in the crumbling cities were a tempting combination of cover and longed for experiences. 

A replicant only had four years of life once activated- who could really blame them for wanting to truly live in what little time they had?

Although he recognised all that history, Kylo sometimes found himself questioning the logic of keeping them out. There were so few humans left on Earth now- tied here by illness, or poverty, or lingering prestige- what did a few short lived robots really mean, one way or another?

Well, for Kylo they meant four months worth of wages a piece, and the chance to get off this rock all the quicker. They weren’t alive. They were just a faulty product that needed cleaning up. Kylo spent his days working with his hands to make this hellhole city a little cleaner, what was one or two assignments to deal with larger trash?

His father had been far more sentimental on the subject. 

Hell, his father had fucking fallen in love with one the damn things, as if it were a real person. Kylo might have forgiven the old man his fantasy if he hadn’t vanished entirely from Kylo’s life when he was barely nine years old. Over the years he'd come to accept that she'd probably killed him. Or he'd killed himself when she inevitably deactivated. Either way he was gone because of a machine, and Kylo- his flesh and blood son- had been left alone.

The replicants were so realistic. Yes, they begged and pleaded and screamed… and bled… when someone like Kylo- the euphemistically named ‘Blade Runners’- came to ‘retire’ them, but they weren’t real. That’s why the distinction between ‘retirement’ versus ‘execution’ was so important. Sentimentality. It would never do to let the public forget that these things  _ were not real. _

The elevator dinged to signal his arrival at the research levels. As always the car paused for a few seconds while it was scanned to ensure there were no unexpected passengers. Whatever else people said about Dr Hux, the man had certainly learned from Tyrell’s mistakes. That fool had had his head crushed by a replicant in his very own bedroom, all because of a chess game. It was absurd.

His father had described the old Tyrell Corporation offices as dark and forbidding. Hux had transformed the building into a symphony of white and gloss, but it had done nothing to make the space more welcoming.

Kylo had never met him, only the few remaining engineers. None of them were here now. 

Seated at the table with their back to the elevator was an odd figure dressed in yellow overalls. It was a colour far more vivid that anything he usually saw out in the streets. But not the most interesting thing about it.

No, that was the hair. Kylo had never see hair like that on a replicant before. 

It was sitting hunched over, face slack and seemingly unbreathing behind its curtain of unbrushed hair. This must be why Hux had called him here. But was this the new replicant the message had warned about? Or an older one that knew something that might help him with the hunt?

His fingers unconsciously stroked a strand of hair as he peered at its face. Why was it unrestrained?

“Please stop petting the test subjects.”

Kylo snatched his hand back like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. He hadn’t been petting him... it. He  _ hadn’t _ been petting it. Just... the hair had looked so different to the usual models, a gorgeous bright red and almost realistically lank. You’d mistake it for human, even up close. Even when you ran your fingers through it.

But it was just an inspection of the product. Not  _ petting _ .

There was a man in a white coat on the far side of the table. Kylo could have sworn that he hadn’t been there a few moments early. From the tightly slicked back red hair and perpetual sneer this had to be Dr Hux.

“ _ Test subject _ ? In my day we called them what they were.” Kylo snapped, trying to paper over his embarrassment with distaste. It didn’t work. His own shampoo-commercial hair still wasn’t enough to cover the expressive blush that had at least always confirmed his own humanity. “ _ Replicant _ .” The word dripped with loathing.

Doctor Hux shrugged. “Your day Mr Ren? You are younger than me, Sir, whoever told you that your day had passed?”

He didn’t want to get dragged into discussing his parents’ politics or his mentor’s slow descent into paranoia. He had a job to do.

“Nevermind. You want me to Voight-Kampff this skinjob or not?” Kylo asked. He pulled his customised portable version of the infamous testing machine from a coat pocket and tossed it onto the table in front of the test subject. 

It didn’t reaction beyond tipping its head back to look at them both.

That made Hux raise an eyebrow. “So you already think he’s a replicant?”

Kylo crouched and peered into the sallow face of the ‘test subject’. It stared back at him with red-rimmed eyes.

“Absolutely certain.” He said after a beat or two of uncomfortable eye contact. “It’s playing at nervousness with micro-expressions but it’s breathing and heartrate are flat. Totally emotionless. Testing it with the old VK system is is a moot point though. You’ve given it synth-eyes. Everyone knows Voight-Kampff needs to measure pupillary dilation as well as the blush response. All you’ve done is made it untestable. That’s cheating.”

“N-no. I’m one of the 4 in 10,000 who are incompatible with live transplants. That’s why I’m still here... on Earth. I can’t leave because of my genes.” The test subject said suddenly. He spoke with an odd rushing cadence, as if he feared both to speak and to keep silence. Greasy strands of red hair fluttered as he - no, it-  tipped its head in a bird like gesture. “Tell me, Mr Ren, why are  _ you _ here?”

Kylo fixed Hux with a disgusted glare.

“I wish you wouldn’t program these things with sass. It just makes my job harder.” Kylo sighed in irritation. He was getting angry and that just wouldn’t do. In an effort to calm himself he tugged his fingers back through his own hair and let the pain centre him. 

“Why, because you can’t tell the difference?” Hux asked.

The doctor had moved to stand uncomfortably close behind Ren. He hadn’t even heard him move. In fact he only knew the man was there by the heat radiating from his shins. 

“Oh,  _ I _ can tell. It’s the general public who complain when I retire the charismatic bastards.” 

Hux snorted. “You hear that? ‘Charismatic’!” His breath smelled strange as is gusted over the back of Kylo’s neck, but he couldn’t pinpoint why.

“Tha-that’s enough.” The test subject interrupted. “By ‘retire’, you mean shoot. But if... you shot me... it’d be murder.”

Kylo shook his head in disgust and turned toward the scientist. “This is just making my job harder Doctor...”

There was a scalpel approximately 3mm from his carotid.

“He’s very convincing, isn’t he?” The ‘test subject’ said with a slightly manic laugh. “Stand down Armitage. Return to your station.”

As the counterfeit man turned away Kylo caught the momentary shine of replicant corneas. The one thing they could never change. And he’d missed it.

“Damnit!” He yelled.

This time the man in yellow did jump as a tray of medical equipment hit the wall, but ‘Armitage’ just stood unblinking next to the mess Kylo had made.

“Things aren’t always what they seem Mr Ren. I’m Declan Hux by the way, the technician. A-appearances can be deceptive. I... I’m sorry you’re upset but we needed to prove how realistic the Nexus 7 really are.”

Kylo bared his teeth at him. “Well next time find someone else to prove your theories on!”

He stormed out without another word.

Gradually the thunder of Kylo’s feet on the stairs faded until the whirr of Declan’s mechanical eyes focusing was the only sound in the lab.

“He’s very convincing, isn’t he?” Armitage asked with a small smile. He turned toward the ‘elevator’ and began to reset the apparatus. It really had been a brilliant idea.

“Oh yes, brother, he really has no idea what he is. Your suggestion that we activate them in an elevator so they believe just arrived here from elsewhere- fantastic. No wonder they always said you were the smart one.” Declan nodded. “Now, do you need help with those contact lenses? I wouldn’t want you to lose your eyes too.”


End file.
